


bleed magic

by knightofcauldrons



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Eye Trauma, Horror, Minor Character Death, Murder, Violence, i wrote this a good few months ago, jon goes full archivist, so its not really canon divergent but not really canon compliant, sorta - Freeform, technically a song fic, the song bleed magic by idkhow held me at gunpoint until i wrote this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-29 01:35:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20073949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightofcauldrons/pseuds/knightofcauldrons
Summary: and nobody believes you now, you're bleeding magic out somehow





	bleed magic

Jon could vaguely register that he was bleeding, though he didn’t know from where. 

Well, that’s somewhat a lie. Jon didn’t know, but the Archivist knew perfectly well that he was bleeding inside his mouth because he had bitten the inside of his cheek _hard_ when the man had punched him. A rib had broken when he was kicked. His elbows were bleeding, bruised, and scraped from when he was pushed down onto the hard concrete, and his index finger was broken as a result of his fall. His nose was broken and crooked, the nostrils coated with blood as the man had punched him square in the nose, and he was bleeding from his eyes. 

..He didn’t know _why_ his eyes were bleeding, and the Archivist won’t tell him. Which is fine. This is fine. On the contrary, it’s very not fine, but Jonathan “Dived Headfirst Into A Coffin That Was The Literal Epitome Of The Fear Of Suffocation With Nothing But The Clothes On His Back, A Significant Lack Of Two Of His Ribs, And Dumb Luck” Sims wasn’t going to die just because some thug in an alleyway beat him up a little, right? 

(Actually, the Coffin wouldn’t even let him die in the first place- Dying in that place was impossible, because something-something-supernatural-bullshit. But his point still stands.)

He looks up at the man, his vision awash with blurry red but somehow he still sees clearly. More than clearly. He Sees the man- An avatar of the Desolation, so that explains why every punch felt like a damn blowtorch- and Jon can See _Everything_ about him. 

Jon finds himself flash-forwarding through the avatar’s life- First crush, first day of highschool, first person he had killed. Discovering his love for the Desolation, joining the cult of the Lightless Flame. Memories that ranged from his first job and childhood pets, to deepest darkest secrets and shameful not-yet-confessions and the cruelest murders, giving Jon whiplash. Visions of the man, starting from birth, and then ending with death. 

In the last vision, the one of the man’s death, the avatar is lying on the ground, eyes still open. Wide, staring. Never to close, never to rest. The alleyway in that vision looks _very similar_ to the one him and Jon are currently standing it. 

Jon sees all of that in just a few seconds. If it were any other time, he’d have a throbbing headache, but now..

The avatar’s eyes are wide. Jon knows that he felt him going through all his memories, picking apart each one of them until there was nothing left- Even the happy memories left a bad taste in the avatar’s mouth as Jon scrutinized every little detail. 

There’s an itch on Jon’s arms. He looks down at them. Bloody red eyes stare back. 

Somehow, it doesn’t bother him. If Jon focuses, he can _see_ through those eyes, until he doesn’t have to focus anymore.

His two regular eyes, the ones placed where eyes normally are, look back at the avatar, and one-by-one, the other eyes follow- The ones on his cheek, his neck, his arms, until all of them are pinning down the avatar with their invasive gaze. Jon can see every little secret swirl around the avatar’s head.

The avatar looks horrified, vulnerable, secrecy stripped away until there was nothing left but a man in a spotlight of red eyes unable to hide, unable to run away because the Archivist will always find him, will always see where he’s going. 

Without saying anything, Jon tells him that even when he’s dead he will always be watched, will always be followed, like a test subject in a lab. Without hearing anything, the avatar gets the message. 

Jon tilts his head at the avatar, his red eyes glinting in as many horrible ways as there are eyes on his body, of which there are infinitely too many. 

“Stop- Stop _looking at me_!” Jon heard the avatar say, and he could hear all the things the avatar didn’t say, too. 

His eyes bleed- all of them- blood pouring all over his face, all over his limbs, thin lines of bright red contrasting against his skin. 

The avatar screams. “_STOP!_ Stop _LOOKING AT ME!_” 

The avatar stumbles backwards, covering his ears, as information pours out of him- Terrible memories flowing out of the angry red cuts that appear on his body, out of his mouth and ears, and Jon looks at all of it. There’s a pitifully _small_ amount of information, but its all the avatar has, and what else would you expect from someone so pitifully mortal, avatar or not? 

Jon doesn’t even recognize his voice when he says, barely audible through the overbearing static in his ears, “_Would you like to give a statement_?” 

He doesn’t get a statement, in the end. The avatar had given away so much information for Jon, that by the end of it, the avatar couldn’t even remember how to speak, having given that away too. That didn’t stop a tape recorder appearing out of nowhere and clicking itself on, though.

The avatar dies of blood loss, from all the wounds that had appeared from seemingly nowhere, thought they probably appeared because of Jon’s sharp gaze. Perhaps literally sharp.

Jon can panic about it later- Later, that’s when he’ll have a mental breakdown about having killed someone, and later is when he’ll question if he’s even human. (Sure, he had killed an avatar. That avatar had been human once, though. So Jon had killed someone.)

He'll freak out later.

But right now isn’t later. Right now, he feels numb. His brain’s just trying to process everything that happened.

Right now, he’s just numb.

(He _does_ panic later, though- Panics rather thoroughly, and it gets recorded, because of course it does. Later, he finds a cup of tea on his desk, and he wonders if the others know what happened. And he wonders if they’d be scared of him. They probably would be. They probably should be. Jon’s scared, too.)

(Somewhere in a prison cell, a man smiles to himself, looking proud and impressed.)

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this a good few months ago while i had the song "bleed magic" by idkhbtfm stuck in my head and i guess inspiration struck??
> 
> hope you enjoyed this!! (comments are greatly appreciated!)


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